


Small Mercies

by faithinthepoor



Series: Once Upon a Time [26]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Tiny</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Mercies

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows my [Fairytale Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618763), [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618771), [This Provincial Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618775), [Viviane or Nimue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618809), [Dreams and Wishes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618851), [All the Better To….](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619484), [Magic Keys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619497), [Curiouser and Curiouser](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619514), [Snow Blind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620280), [Spinning Straw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620288), [Wooden Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621128), [Poisoned](http://archiveofourown.org/works/622526), [True Love and Other Curses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/625038), [Spellbound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/628806), [Over the Rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/630076), [Facades](http://archiveofourown.org/works/632227), [Lost Girls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/636939), [Monstrosities](http://archiveofourown.org/works/640162), [Love and Lies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/652912), [Something Wicked this Way Comes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/665458), [Dreamscapes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/672345), [Homecomings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/676052), [Test Match](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682287), [Wishful Thinking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/697330) and [Absent Friends](http://archiveofourown.org/works/771482)

She doesn’t know what to do. She knew better than to come here. Her actions were reckless and dangerous. They had the potential to reveal things that her mother simply can not be allowed to know. It’s true that her mother needs to remain convinced that she would do anything to get Henry back but this really wasn’t the way to go about it. This can only make her seem weak and desperate in her mother’s eyes and while that might be a means to an end, it is an end that will result in disaster. 

The looming threat that Cora poses isn’t her only problem. The game has changed. People know the truth. Her self-imposed exile can no longer be explained by her alleged guilt in the death of the fake doctor. He is alive and well and she should be happy. Not that she cares about his health, whether he breathes or not is of no concern to her, but she does care that she has been proved innocent. In a way it shouldn’t matter, being innocent of one murder hardly makes a difference. The world could drown in the blood that she has on her hands. Somehow this one death, or lack there of, matters though. It matters a lot.

In the end it may not make a difference. Whether the cricket is alive or dead doesn’t change the fact that Cora is here. Her innocence won’t protect her from her mother and what lies ahead. All it will mean once Cora’s plans reach fruition, and destroy Regina’s life in the process, is that she gets to know that in this one instance she didn’t let people down. This time she was the one who was let down. 

Her mother believes that her little charade would was successful. It was a move designed to remove any allies, no matter how unlikely, that Regina may have. It was meant to isolate Regina and point out to her that she can trust no one but her mother. It would never have occurred to Cora that there could be fall out from her actions. Regina knows that Cora wanted to drive her back into the fold, back into her cold embrace and there was a time when Cora’s scheme would have been completely effective, but that time has passed.

For much of her life her mother was her weakness. In spite of everything, all the suffering and all the scars, all she ever wanted was to make her mother happy. To make her mother proud. To make her mother love her. She assassinated her mother, or at least she thought she did, not out of hate but out of desperation. She had known that she wasn’t good enough to earn her mother’s love and that she never would be. Death was a much easier option. When she thinks about it now her plan still seems elegant, the only problem was that she killed the wrong person.

She should have been the one to die. She should have died long ago. Before she gave up hope and took her first steps down the path towards darkness. It’s too late to change many things but it’s not too late to still make the choice to kill herself rather than her mother. It’s not a choice that she can make though. 

Things are different now. Before her decision to kill her mother had been entirely selfish. Now she wants her mother dead as much for others as for herself. Her mother is no longer her weakness, that honour belongs to her son and her lover. They have become both her weakness and her strength. They are her salvation. She may not get a happy ending with them, she may not even get to see them again, but they changed her life. They changed her. 

Emma and Henry let her know that the woman who took more lives than she could count, the person who was so dead inside that she ripped out the heart of the only person who still cared about her, was still capable of feeling love. It’s probably not the love they deserve but it’s love nonetheless and it’s more love than her mother ever felt for her. 

She knows now that she didn’t fail her mother, her mother failed her. She shouldn’t have had to prove herself to win her mother’s love; her mother should have given it freely. Loving Henry taught her that. 

Loving Emma taught her something too. It taught her that it is possible to escape one’s past. That you don’t have to be defined by your mistakes and your missteps. More importantly, Emma taught her that love isn’t just the exclusive domain of the pure, the so-called ‘good’.

Together they showed her that her blackened heart could still beat. She doesn’t know if the same is true for her mother but she does know that if there is a person who can make Cora’s heart beat again it’s not her daughter. She also knows that she is not the person who is going to give Cora a chance at redemption. Regina can not be the one to take that risk because it’s no longer her risk to take. If she fails the cost is not her mother’s eternal resentment but rather Henry and Emma’s lives.

She is not an idiot. Her mother may claim that she will do everything in her power to reunite Regina with her son but Regina knows that Cora would never tolerate a presence that could divide Regina’s loyalties. Cora isn’t interested in Regina’s happiness, she never has been, she has only ever wanted Regina’s complete and utter devotion. Her servitude. Henry is nothing but an obstacle to Cora’s domination of Regina and she is certain that once her mother has used Henry as a bargaining chip, a tool to get Regina to do her bidding, Cora will end his life.

What surprises her is that Cora could think that Regina would be fooled by her claims that she is here for her. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but then again Cora has never had a strong opinion of her daughter. She has always seen Regina as a pathetic disappointment who lacks the ambition and vision necessary to make the most of the opportunities life hands to her. In addition, Cora probably believes that Regina’s spirit is well and truly broken and that she doesn’t have it in her to defy her again.

In a funny way, especially given that she has now lost him for a second time, Regina is the closest she has been in a long time to the young girl who was willing to forgo all that was expected of her to be with Daniel. She understands that life is far more cruel than she ever imagined and she will never be foolish enough to believe that love can conquer all but she no longer dismisses it as unimportant.

It might be that love is a little too important to her because it makes her do risky things like going to Mary Margaret’s apartment seeking out Henry and Emma.  
It is understandable that she would want to see Henry, even her mother can buy that excuse, but the truth is that she needed to see Emma just as much, if not more.

Snow probably doesn’t know it but in telling Regina that Henry and Emma had left town she has effectively ripped out her heart. It shouldn’t surprise Regina; indirect destruction is what Snow does best. She was left standing outside Snow’s door feeling hollow and horrified. Not only were Emma and Henry gone, they were in the hands of Rumplestiltskin. As fears go that is second only to them being in the hands of Cora.

She should have cut her losses there and then. Staying in town ran the risk of drawing attention to herself but she didn’t want to go back to face Cora. That presented her with a new problem because there is really nowhere in town that she can go. Her home feels empty and foreign. It holds too many memories of Emma and Henry to be entirely safe and it’s tainted now that her mother has been there. With nowhere else to go she finds herself loitering in a place that she never could have imagined she would willingly spend time.

The cold is seeping into her bones and her feet are aching when Red finally appears, struggling with a load of garbage. The waitress attempts to transfer the bags into the skip but one of them splits, spilling its contents all over the ground. Red utters a string of curses and drops to the ground, gathering up the pieces of plastic and food scraps. 

Regina shocks herself by going over to help her. Red startles at Regina’s approach and looks at up her suspiciously, “What are you doing here?”

She wants to answer but words won’t come, tears come instead and she could not be more embarrassed. Red appears to take a second to assess the situation and then she stands and grabs Regina’s wrist, dragging her along and through the back door of Granny’s. Red locks the door behind them and looks at Regina apologetically as she says, “She’ll be back soon. We don’t have much time.”

“I take it your grandmother is still none to found of me.”

“She wanted you head on a pike even before people thought you had killed Archie.”

“Has the news that I was falsely accused not reached her aging ears?”

“I’m not entirely sure that it matters to her.”

So much for her innocence. It might not matter to Granny but she can only hope that it matters to others. Two others in particular. “Well then, I suppose I should consider myself lucky that you possess enough manners to let me in.”

“I wasn’t about to talk to you out in the open when anyone could see,” Red says with the kind of insolence towards Regina that would once have been punishable by death.

“It wouldn’t do to damage your reputation now would it?” Regina asks snidely.

“I see you’ve at least kept what serves for your sense of humour intact.”

“Well it hasn’t been easy,” she replies with more honesty than she had planned.

Red’s demeanour changes abruptly. There is genuine concern on her face as she asks Regina, “Are you ok?”

“I don’t know,” and the honesty keeps on coming. She needs to get out of here before she says something that she really regrets.

“We’ve been worried about you.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

“I’m not lying. I don’t want bad things to happen to you.”

“It wasn’t the worry part that I doubted,” well at least it wasn’t the thing that caused her the most doubt, “it was the ‘we’ part that I had a problem with. We both know no one else cares.”

“Now who’s lying?”

“It’s hardly a secret that I’m not popular, dear. I believe you mentioned something earlier about heads and pikes.”

“Oh I know I did and even if almost everyone feels that way, almost everyone isn’t everyone.”

“No but we’ve already established that you are the lone dissenter.”

Red gives her a strange look and asks, “Why are you trying to act like they don’t care about you?”

“And just who would _they_ be?”

“I don’t have time for these games. I don’t want to be the reason that your head ends up on a pike and I don’t want to risk my head ending up right beside yours. I haven’t spoken to him but I know for certain that she cares about you. She misses you, Regina”

Her mouth suddenly feels dry, “She does?”

“You too are as bad as one another. Of course she does.”

That might be a bit easier for her to believe if Emma hadn’t have left town. “You can’t be sure of that.”

“What is wrong with you? I take it back. You are worse than her. At least she is willing to talk about you.”

“You spoke to her? About me?” She does her best to sound angry but she’s not sure that she is. It’s silly but the thought of Emma talking about her makes her heart race due to a mixture of fear and excitement. 

“Yes we did. So I know she cares, more than cares, and I know she misses you.”

Regina is struck by myriad emotions, few of them pleasant. Her mother may not be right about love being a weakness but it certainly doesn’t make life easy. Things were simpler when the most she ever felt inside was rage. She wants to ask Red everything. She wants to know every word Emma said. Regina tells herself that she is too proud to ask but the truth is that she is too scared. She’s scared all the time nowadays.

Red seems to sense her discomfort and gives her a perplexed look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. I thought it would help you feel better to know. It seemed to help her to have someone she could talk to.”

She places what she hopes is a reassuring hand on the other woman’s arm. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m glad you could help her. I’ve been worried that she can’t be helped.”

“I’m sure she will be ok. Loving you isn’t all that bad,” Red says with a smirk. 

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that dear,” Regina says dryly.

“She’s stronger than you think,” Red replies and has the audacity to wink at her.

“She’s also gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“She left and she took Henry with her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Gone, left, no longer in town – what’s so hard to understand?” she barks.

“Why she would leave?”

“Because she can,” Regina says bitterly.

“That’s not a real answer.”

“It’s as good an answer as any. Wouldn’t you leave if you could?”

“I don’t know. Would you?”

She doesn’t know the answer to that. There was never a reason to leave before. Her entire world was in the space of that town. Everything that ever mattered, good and bad, had been there. It’s a sad reflection on her life. She had been a girl with dreams, a girl who had wanted to see all that the world had to offer, but somewhere along the way she traded the world for vengeance. 

The curse was never hers but in a way it gave her more than she ever could have hoped. Not just Henry and Emma, although they are her most obvious gifts, it gave her the chance to make her enemies suffer as she had suffered. It turns out that her greatest triumph was not to rule over them in fear but to make their lives empty and small, just as hers had been. As victories go it wouldn’t be considered epic, no bard will write this tale, but it is somehow more satisfying than stealing hearts and extinguishing lives at will. In fact it would have been prefect if only she didn’t feel as lost and trapped as the rest of them but even that was better than what had come before.

Without even knowing it Rumple gave her something more precious than power. Perhaps he has come to understand this and taking her son and lover from her is his way of rectifying his mistake. Whether Emma went willingly or not is irrelevant. Emma is in Rumplestiltskin’s hands now and no good can come of that. 

“I can’t leave,” she eventually tells Red.

“Because of memory thing or because of your mother?”

She whips her head around and glares at Red, “What do you know about her?”

“Only that she’s here and that she killed Archie,” the wolf girl tilts her head, “and that you seem to fear her which can not be good.”

“Whatever happens I need you to know that I tried my best.”

“You say that like you believe that your best won’t be good enough.”

“I don’t know if it will.” It never has been before. 

“You could go after them. The rules that apply to the rest of us may not apply to you. You never lost your memory in the first place did you?”

“But what if the rules do apply, what if I lose it now. I don’t want to go back to being her. In spite of what everyone thinks of me I really have tried hard to do better, to be better.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. I know you don’t want to be a monster.”

Regina graces Red with a small smile, “I really don’t but I feel that outcome is unavoidable.”

“Because of your mother?”

“It wasn’t that hard for her to turn me into a monster before and I fear it might be even easier this time.”

“But surely you have more of a reason to fight this time.”

“You mean because I have people worth fighting for?” Red nods her affirmation. “That just means that she has ammunition to use against me.”

“So you would sacrifice everyone, yourself included, to try and protect them from her?”

“Of course,” she says because really it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Which is why, as much as it hurts, I’m glad that they’re gone. It’s better this way.” She would never admit it but Gold has done her a favour. There is a real chance that in taking them he has kept them safe and even if they are not completely safe they will not be here to watch her unravel in front of them. To see her fail them.

“If that’s the case then I think you are going to be disappointed,” Red says.

“How so?”

“There is no way that that woman will not do anything and everything to get back to you.”

“Then she is even more of an idiot than I ever thought.”

“Well she _is_ stupid enough to be in love with you.”

Red looks as though she is waiting to be slapped, or worse, but Regina’s only retaliation is with soft words, “I just wish that was a good thing.”

“If it helps, I’m pretty sure that she thinks it’s a very good thing.”

“Really?” she hates how young and vulnerable she sounds.

“Absolutely.”

Red’s belief makes her feel a sense of happiness that she doesn’t deserve especially when that happiness has the potential to come with serious consequences for Emma. She sighs and confesses, “I shouldn’t want that as much as I do.”

“Regina it’s ok to want things.”

“I don’t really have a history of wanting the right things.”

“I’d tell you that this is something that is right but I’m not an expert in this area. I ate the last person I loved.” To her credit Red tries to smile.

“So you are saying that if I manage not to eat Emma I’m doing better than you?” 

“Regina Mills was that an attempt at a joke?”

“I suppose it was,” she says sheepishly.

“I wasn’t very funny,” Red scolds but her eyes are lighter than they were before.

“I’m not a very funny person,” Regina offers.

“Well it’s a start.” To her credit Red tries to smile.

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

Regina has no idea what Red was going to say in return because their entire conversation dies when the bell to the diner rings. It sounds like a cannon and Red is so pale that she might have been mortally wounded. No words are exchanged as Regina does her best to quietly back out of the building. 

Red follows her to the door and mouths, “I’m sorry.”

She knows she should leave but she hesitates long enough to say, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,’ Red whispers.

Regina fixes her eyes to the ground and says, “If you see Emma can you tell….just tell her….well….you know….” She waves her hand around ineffectually.

“Yes I do,” Red replies, “and Regina, so does she.”

Granny calls out and Red literally comes running, leaving Regina alone once again. This day has not gone at all to plan but it could have gone worse. Talking with Red has definitely helped. She may not feel happy but at least she feels better. Now she just needs to try and find a way to hold on to that feeling.


End file.
